But you also don’t want to put it off for too long. Well, there are things you can take away from it for next time. Should you avoid people who make grammatical errors in their profile? But answering these questions is a useful way to progress the process of online dating.

After all, if someone is keen to arrange a date with you, they won’t keep fighting for someone they don’t really know forever. Many match-making websites now have their own blogs, or guides advising you how and when to meet – among other tips – that you might find useful.

But the simple truth is that messaging on the internet is nothing more than a fact-finding mission.

You can gather information about the other person, but until you meet them you won’t know if ‘I love to laugh’ means Fawlty Towers or fart jokes. It’s easy to think you know a person better than you really do.

You can tell more about a person in half an hour, than weeks of emailing. “It's always better to meet an online date sooner than later - it's too easy to message endlessly, and you need to find out whether you have chemistry off-screen before you down a flirty emoticon rabbit hole that could last for weeks or months,” she explains.

“Try not to message for more than two weeks, and if you're nervous, you could always speak on the phone first.

Those 17 to 23 days of messages are just the first chapter in your story. The Big Short, the film adaptation of Michael Lewis' book of the same name about the causes of the financial crisis, opens in UK cinemas this weekend.

How will the story stack up against the greatest films about business?

What’s more, a study by dating site e Harmony, estimated that seven in ten couples will have done so by 2040 – with 55 to 64-year-olds experiencing the biggest boom (an expected 30 per cent rise between 20).

Of course, exchanging a barrage of emails – even phone calls or Skyping– can seem more secure.